"They're one of the more mellow, placid fish out there. They just like to jump."

Summer Partying

Largely unspoiled, the Suwannee River originates in the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia and runs southwest into Florida, dropping in elevation through limestone layers resulting in Florida's only whitewater rapids.

In the summer the river can get crowded with recreational boaters.

"The mid-river seems to be the most populated," said Karen Parker, a spokesperson for the Florida Wildlife Commission in Lake City.

"On a weekend there might be hundreds of boats out there, with people going tubing or kayaking."

Parker says there are more than a million registered boats in Florida.

"It's inevitable that we will have these [sturgeon] collisions when more boaters come in contact with the animals," she said.

"That's showing itself all over the state with all kinds of critters."

"With the development and encroachment on habitat, we're going to have more and more encounters between people and animals," she added.

Warning Signs

Gulf sturgeon were listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 1991 after a century of being fished for meat and caviar. It is now illegal to catch and kill sturgeon.

There are signs that the population has been increasing since then.

"People are seeing the sturgeon jumping out of the water 24/7 in the summer months," Huff, the St. Petersburg researcher, said.

"[One of our biologists] said that with so many people on personal watercraft on the river, it's like [people] are playing Russian roulette [with these fish]."

Huff says his office is planning to put up signs at river access points warning people about sturgeon collisions.

Despite their possible increase in numbers, sturgeon are still vulnerable to overharvesting and habitat degradation, the experts say.

"I sincerely hope that not an ounce of mentality anywhere is pointed toward getting rid of or reducing these fish [because of these collisions]," Krummrich, the biologist, said.